Marcia Bonta

  • Chasing Breeding Birds

    “You know you’re getting old when you start repeating yourself,” I thought when I first heard about Pennsylvania’s Second Breeding Bird Atlas project. “Been there, done that,” I said and immediately signed up last spring and became the “owner” of the two blocks that include our property. The same, yet different, is probably an apt…

  • Marooned

    Last January was a dream of a winter. By the middle of the month we had a foot of standing snow and I was out every bright, sunny day on my snowshoes. Birds and animals flocked to our feeders–32 American tree sparrows, 62 mourning doves, 40 dark-eyed juncos–along with a button buck, two cottontail rabbits,…

  • An Irish Spring

    “I wake and hear it raining.” So begins Mark Van Doren’s wonderful poem “Morning Worship” and so began many of my mornings last spring. Van Doren goes on to list the wonders of the natural world he would miss were he dead, praising all the “sweet beings” that he knows will outlive him–mountains, huge trees,…

  • A Walking Meditation

    Another National Migratory Bird Count day and we are blessed by a perfect May morning–cool, clear, and ringing with birdsong. This time, though, I resolve to take it easy, to move slowly and quietly, to make this day a walking meditation on the beauties of this most splendid of months. Besides, I am getting older…

  • Fool’s Errand

    Perhaps it was the memory of a rainy April day at the Brucker Great Blue Heron Sanctuary of Thiel College, or perhaps it was my admiration for these elegant waterbirds and the chance to see them once again going about their familial tasks. Whatever the reason, I had volunteered to participate in a statewide survey…

  • Looking for Winter Raptors

    As citizen scientists become more numerous in the birding world, there is no end to the monitoring projects we can engage in. Take the WRS, for example, which stands for the Winter Raptor Survey. The brainchild of birder Greg Grove, it seems like the easiest of exercises–driving around a specific area in the middle of…

  • Great Backyard Bird Count

    It’s mid-February and once again I’m counting birds for science. When I first heard about the Great Backyard Bird Count, I was enthusiastic. Instead of only one day, like the Christmas Bird Count and National Migratory Bird Day, I had four days. And it took place during the psychologically longest winter month, even though numerically…